Welcome to Alta Via Consulting, LLC.
Our Philosophy
In a business world prolific with consulting firms, Alta Via Consulting promises a different experience. Most consulting firms are staffed with generalists who work to solve focused challenges with general solutions. As a niche provider, we specialize in addressing the specific challenges associated with advanced cost management solutions and supporting managers’ optimization process such as planning, control, and taking corrective and adaptive actions. We are passionate about what we do and proud of our record in this market segment.
Highlights...
Alta Via Consulting's Professor of Management Accountancy offers insights into 2011 CPA Exam
07/27/2010
Professor B.Douglas Clinton, who holds the Alta Via Consulting endowed chair has received rave reviews for his CPA teaching expertise and new video explaining the upcoming changes to the 2011 Certified Public Accountant Examination. Dr. Clinton has analyzed the Business Environments and Concepts (BEC) section and explains the changes that the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) has initiated for the new 2011 CPA Exam. To watch Professor Clinton's 4 minute video clip link here, where he provides a quick rundown of the Planning and Measurement section of the BEC exam, highlighting content and skill specifications. For more information on Dr. Clinton and Alta Via Consulting's professorship link here.
Alta Via Offers Insight at SAP's PLM Customer Network Forum June 15 (Newtown Square, PA)
05/27/2010
Alta Via Consulting, an SAP Business Partner, will be presenting at SAP Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Customer Network Forum, June 15-16, 2010. Join Alta Via's Julien Delvat SAP/BI principal consultant, along with Annette Bowersock, Senior Business Analyst at McCormick & Company, to learn how McCormick uses Product Design Costing Estimate (PDCE) to better serve their customers with fast, flexible and accurate cost simulations. The emphasis is on sharing effective deployment strategies and best practices to maximize business value from PLM investments. There is no cost to attend, but advanced registration is required. Link here for more information and registration details...
Alta Via Consulting Presents at IMA's 91st Annual Conference June 7 (Baltimore, MD)
05/21/2010
Alta Via Consulting has teamed up with the RCA Institute to present "Resource Consumption Accounting with Open Source Software", an interactive RCA sample cost model in the ROSA application at this year’s IMA Annual Conference & Exposition. Join Alta Via Consulting principal, Anton van der Merwe, and the RCA Institute's executive director, Larry White for a hands-on guided session at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, June 7th, 2010. Learning objectives include: 1) understanding the construction and use of an RCA model; 2) gain familiarity with RCA decision support information using business intelligence software; 3) learn how to create and build reports using the Excel interface for RCA modeling of your business. Link here to learn more or register for event…
Alta Via Speaking Engagement at 9th Annual Beyond Budgeting Conference April 21 (Dallas, TX)
03/17/2010
Alta Via principal, Anton van der Merwe will be co-presenting "Managing Shared Services Costs Using RCA" (Resource Consumption Accounting), with Larry White, Executive Director of the RCA Institute at the 9th Annual Beyond Budgeting Conference in Dallas, TX. The topic acknowledges that optimal shared service operations require a high quality, transparent costing approach that allows managers and customers to understand, plan for, and manage the cost of services. Service Center managers must adapt to varying service levels, drive improvements to reduce costs, and effectively plan for resource investments. Participants will learn the basic principles of RCA, how it integrates operational and cost planning, and fosters optimization in shared service operations. This presentation occurs on Wednesday, April 21st at 9:00am Central. For Conference and Registration information link to 9th Annual Beyond Budgeting Conference Agenda.
Alta Via Presents at SAP's Financials 2010, Friday March 19th (Orlando, FL)
03/10/2010
A presentation called "Proven Practices for Designing an End-to-End Product Cost Model", by Alta Via consultant Cyril Johannes will examine key criteria for creating a less complex, more sustainable product cost model utilizing the cost center accounting, product cost planning, and cost object controlling components within SAP ERP. Learn the critical reporting and legal valuation requirements as well as the core components of a product cost model that need to be taken into account in the initial design phase. Step through configuration tips for product costing variant components, including valuation variants, date control, quantity structure control, and transfer control. Understand the impact of your design on other SAP ERP Financials components, including production planning, materials management, and financial accounting, from both an operational and financial perspective. Take home a white paper that illustrates several design points, such as the design of the conversion cost pool and cost component structure. This presentation falls under the Managerial Accounting and Controlling (CO) - Track 2 and occurs on Friday, March 19th at 8:30am Eastern. For Registration information link to SAP Financials2010.
Cost Management Publishes "Debating the Principles: ABC and Its Dominant Principle of Work"
09/25/2009
The third article in the Debating the Principles series titled, Debating the Principles: ABC and Its Dominant Principle of Work by Anton van der Merwe has been published in the September/October 2009 issue of Cost Management magazine. The series highlights questions and concerns with the principles that underlie the existing management accounting (MA) approaches, in particular pointing to issues related to the principles used and asking whether or not they are conducive to effective decision support. The first article looked at the Theory of Constraints (TOC) and its use of relevance as a guiding principle. The second paper dealt with the principles in Lean Accounting, while the third article in the series addresses Activity-based Costing (ABC) including the recently revised Time-driven ABC and in particular the dominance of the principle of work in ABC. To download a PDF version of the published articles mentioned above, link to our Publications page.
Alta Via Consulting Partners with myDials™ to Target Health Care Industry
08/21/2009
On August 11, 2009 Alta Via Consulting together with myDials™ presented a webinar called Performance Optimization in Healthcare: Making Profitability Visible and Managing It. This webinar targeted the health care industry and highlighted how to improve upon the traditional costing approach. By using Resource Consumption Accounting as the costing foundation and myDials™ as the front end Dashboard – its visualization capabilities will cater to both the C-Suite level executives and individual operations managers, who need critical and timely costing information with drill-down functionality. Link to Alta Via's HealthCare Webinar (Length approx. 50 minutes).
Alta Via Consulting Assists With New IFAC International Good Practice Guidance Publication
08/12/2009
The Professional Accountants in Business (PAIB) Committee of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), has just released its International Good Practice Guidance (IGPG) publication, Evaluating and Improving Costing in Organizations with the help of task force members Anton van der Merwe, Principle of Alta Via Consulting, Larry White, RCA Institute Executive Director and Northern Illinois University’s managerial accounting professor Dr. B.Douglas Clinton. Their contributions focused on providing significant insights to working with universal costing principles and how Resource Consumption Accounting offers organizations the greatest level of accuracy and visibility for managerial accounting information (see pages 19 & 25; Costing Levels Maturity model). We would like to thank IFAC for allowing us the opportunity to contribute to this international guidance paper and “how better costing can result in better management decision-making”.
The IGPG publication Evaluating and Improving Costing in Organizations and the Costing Levels Maturity model are both available from the IFAC website.
Alta Via’s Sponsored Webcast Provided Excellent Forum for RCA Q&A’s
08/03/2009
Resource Consumption Accounting: Linking Operations and Finance to Drive Business Performance webinar held July 16 was well received and provided an excellent opportunity for thoughtful questions asked by participants in the Q&A portion of the webcast. According to Larry White, Executive Director for the RCA Institute, “The webcast with MESA demonstrated the need by operations managers for greater insights and participation into the determination of costs in their organization”. Mr. White elaborated, “Too often, cost information is based on information for GAAP financial statements, which simply aren't designed to meet the decision making needs of managers inside an organization”. A transcript of the Q&A’s, answered by Larry White, Wolfgang Doeller from macs Controlling™ and Mark Arrieri, Controller, US Technical Products from Neenah Paper, offers valuable insight and is provided courtesy of the RCA Institute. To view the Q&A's and additional RCA information click here.
Professional Accountants in Business (PAIB) Acknowledges Benefits of RCA in Sustainability Framework
06/30/2009
The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), through one of its independent international standard-setting boards, released a Sustainability Framework that has generated a record 33,000 page views since its launch in February '09. In this web-based document, the Professional Accountants in Business (PAIB) committee members have recognized and cited Resource Consumption Accounting (RCA) as one of the key ways to help organizations “improve their understanding of environmental (and social) costs through their costing systems and models”. The RCA reference can be found under the sub-heading Improving Information Flows to Support Decisions under the Internal Management area of the Framework. The committee informs readers that proper cost allocation can be built "directly into the cost accounting system" and RCA is an alternative that offers this functionality. Link here to learn more about RCA…
Past Highlights...
